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I just came on board, I have posted a couple of bottles in the porcelain section, and I am wondering about the material on this blue carved bottle that I have here. It feels very heavy and cold in the hand. It weighs 2.8 ounces, and measures 2,28 inches (5.8cm) tall, 1.80 inches wide (4.6cm) wide and 0.72 inches (1.8cm) thick. It has a navy blue color with some brownish pigmentations.

The bottle may seem heavy if it is not well hollowed out, just core drilled. If that is the case it could be sodalite. This is a dark blue mineral with a specific gravity (s.g.) of 2.13 to 2.29, and hardness (on Mohs' hardness scale) of 5.5-6.0. Sodalite has a vitreous lustre when polished, just like your bottle, but almost always has some inclusions of white or grey calcite. I can see what looks like whitish patches near the foot, but not sure from the photo.

If your bottle is reasonably well hollowed out and has no calcite inclusions, then it could be azurite. This is a much heavier stone, wth s.g. of 3.7 to 3.9. It has a glassy shine when polished well. But it is relatively soft (hardness 3.5-4.0), so is easily scratched.

You could test the hardness by trying to make a small scratch with a sharp steel object just inside the throat of the mouth opening, where it won't show.

Both these stones are quite new to the snuff bottle industry. I'd say your bottle is 1980s or later.

What a coincidence, Tom, those two crystals were exactly what I came up with when browsing 'The Crystal Bible'. Of course, the places where these crystals are found made me have doubts about them, since they where not available to the Chinese until recently, as you said, from the 80's. I tried to scrape it using a dentist type carving tool, but, I couldn't even scratch it. It is a very hard crystal, so it must be sodalite.